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The National Geographic News reported on April 8, 2004, that research was forthcoming about the imact of global warming on the Greenland ice shelf. Reporting on a just published study in the journal Nature, the article points to a future where Greenland ice melts entirely in a thousand years:

"The study considered the climate sensitivity of a range of climate models and a range of carbon dioxide scenarios, from 450 parts per million, the lowest level considered by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to a thousand parts per million, or four times the pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentration.

'They demonstrate that a warming of about 3° Celsius for ongoing melting of the Greenland ice sheet is exceeded by 2100 for the majority of cases considered,' said John Church, a climate scientist at the Australian government CSIRO Marine Research center in Hobart who was not involved in the study.

In the most extreme scenario, using a carbon dioxide level of 1,000 ppm, the study predicts temperatures to rise by 8° Celsius (18° Fahrenheit) by the year 2050. This, in turn, would raise sea levels by 7 meters (23 feet) in a thousand years.

'This is a high concentration, but it is within the range of scenarios that people have considered,' Gregory said. 'It's not a completely outrageous number.' "

The article also noted: "According to a new climate change study, the melting of Greenland's ice sheet would raise the oceans by seven meters (23 feet), threatening to submerge cities located at sea level, from London to Los Angeles."

The National Geographic News article did not report on other scientific models that are attempting to understand the non-linearity of the ice-melt processes.

You can read the entire article here:

Greenland Melt May Swamp LA, Other Cities, Study Says